Friends School Plant Sale 2012

14
May

As promised, here is a review of my first experience at the epic Friends School Plant Sale held at the Minnesota State Fair Grandstand.

It was great.

When we got there, we got a wristband. The wristband (at no charge) had a number on it and was our entry ticket into the sale. The MC (yes, she was on the mic) told people when it was their turn to go through the gate and all those with that number on their wrist band could enter. We had to wait a bit, but I was with a wonderful longtime friend and it was a gorgeous morning, so it was no chore. Plus there were vendors sprinkled around the waiting area, so it made for interesting people watching.

Lots of gardeners brought their own wagons or carts, some rigged up with various devices to fit as many plants as possible into their cart without them getting squashed (think shelving systems). These guys were the hard-core plant salers. Even if you didn’t bring your own, there were plenty of carts available to use.

Now the fun started. We got inside and I was amazed by the organization and variety. All the plants were sorted by category and were then in alphabetical order. It was a type-A’s dream come true. There was room between the aisles and plenty of clearly marked “employees” to ask for help (all the people working the sale were volunteers, parents, teachers and lots of students of the Friends School).

You should have seen all the varieties they had. I mean, things you’d have to special order if you relied on most local nurseries. There were a few things missing due to crop failures sad little empty places on the wooden shelves, but these were sandwiched between such abundant replacements that I can’t imagine people could complain much. The whole Grandstand was filled with plants front the front to the back, all the way across the whole first level, and some of them had multiple tiers. Crazy amounts of plants. And there were trees, shrubs and roses outside. It just kept going!

When it came time to check out, the process was simple. You were given a tally sheet at the beginning and it was up to you to write down what plant, how much and how many. You gave that sheet to a friendly lady at the tally table and she’d tippity-tap her big calculator and write up your total. Push your cart to a cashier further down and you’re done.

The whole thing took us about an hour and a half, and that was with a few backtracks and additions.

Overall there are a couple things I would mention to any person interested in going to the sale in the future:

#1. If you can avoid bringing your kids, you will have an easier time.

You can bring kids, of course, but it is a big place, concrete floors, I have no idea where the bathrooms were, and there are A LOT of people there. The whole experience will be more relaxing for you if your kids are playing with a nice friend or grandparent at home.

#2. You should go in with a plan.

Because of the magnitude and the crowd, it is not the place to plan out your planters. They have a great website where you can get organized ahead of time by creating a wishlist. When you print out the wishlist, it has the code for each plant, and that will help you find it’s location at the sale. And you’ll definitely want to have that list.

#3. You are among kin.

I was surprised at the patience and general good attitude of everyone in attendance. I watched people crush rosemary and smile as they inhaled the scent. I saw people oogle flowers in other people’s carts and comment on how pretty it was going to look. People were polite, patient, and nobody stole my purse even when I left my cart unattended multiple times. What nice folks. 🙂

Since you know you’re going to spend the money on your plants and flowers anyway, if you want to support a school in the process and have fun making an event of it, I think you’ll really enjoy the Friends School Plant Sale. And no, I don’t have kids at the school nor am I a paid spokeswoman for them. But it was a wonderful day with a great friends and beautiful weather. You’ll have to ask me in a few years when I’ve made it through the sale by myself and in the rain. It might just be worth it.

Dirt and Cheap Fencing

9
Apr

This week we got the garden puffed up with dirt (soil, for you dirt snobs :), and because I know you’re dying to know, it was a tri-blend mix from a landscaping place in our area) and decided we needed some kind of fence to go around it, mostly to slow down the children, dog and deer who may tramp through it.

We went through quite a few fencing ideas before we stumbled onto deer netting. It is a tough plastic net with small holes and is designed to keep deer out of your plants. It comes on a roll that cost $18 and is 7ft wide x 100 ft long. They sell it at most big box home/garden stores and the 7 ft width is folded in half in the roll. I think they intended people to set it over the top of said plants, but we went a different route.

We kept it doubled up, bought 4ft tall plastic fence stakes at $2 each, and just unwound the roll of deer netting around the perimeter of the garden. It isn’t going to keep the deer from jumping the fence, but I’m hoping they’ll have better things to do. I have to hang some ribbons from the fence because it is virtually invisible and the dog already almost ran straight into it! In the photo you can see the stakes but just barely make out the fencing. I’ll try to get a better pic soon.

I may be crazy but I took at chance and my fellow veggie garden partner and I planted potatoes, onions, and two kinds of climbing peas. I may have to baby them along next week, since it is supposed to get a bit chilly, but everything is up for grabs this year with the early spring weather we’ve had in Minnesota. How are your garden plans coming along?

Garden Sale at the State Fair Grounds

3
Apr

I plan to make a trip to the State Fair grounds on Mother’s Day this year. That is the weekend of the Friends School Plant Sale, and according to all indicators it’s a doozy.

People get there early and wait in line with their wagons and wheelbarrows. You must go in with a plan and a map, or you will miss out on getting some of the things you came for in the first place. We’ll see if I can wait until Mother’s Day for everything I’d like, but there are always more plants to stick in the garden somewhere, right? Here’s the link so you can check it out yourself:

http://friendsschoolplantsale.com/

Did I mention that my dirt arrived today? I never thought I’d be so excited to see a pile of dirt in my driveway!

How to Plan a New Garden

29
Mar

My family and I have now been in our new house for about one year. Last summer I was very responsible and only accomplished the following garden goals:

Uncover the brick path from house to garden (it was almost completely covered in grass)

Carefully and selectively weed the main flower garden in the rear so as not to weed actual plants

Slap forehead after I discover I destroyed valuable plants when I thought they were weeds

Create a small garden along driveway

Generally weed like crazy

Plant a few things (my “few” might look different to me than it does to you)

Lay out a walkway through the rear garden

Grow a few veggies in containers

Now that all that responsibility can be over with and more of the garden is identifiable, I’m pretty sure that this is the summer I can go to town on this yard.

We have a big yard (finally) and it has quite a bit of shade cover, which is why I have to be a bit stubborn about where I start a vegetable garden. My dear husband has a favorite option but I don’t think that location will provide enough light, and as we all know, a vegetable garden must get as much light as possible. But much of the sunniest portion of our yard is on a slight slope, so that adds a small potential twist.

I think I’ve found the answer though, and I’m so excited to get in there and dig! A wonderful friend of mine asked if I would be interested in doing a garden together with her, so I feel confident that I can accomplish this garden because I’ll have back-up. The strategy we are going to use is to plant a mounded garden rather than a traditional flat garden in skinny rows.

Edward C. Smith wrote the Vegetable Gardener’s Bible and in it he shows how a mounded garden supports root growth and leads to a superior yield, and even less weeding. I won’t go into that now, but seriously, if you haven’t heard of planting in anything but straight, flat rows, it’s definitely a trip to the library to check out his book.

Everything I’ve researched tells me that I would have been better to begin my garden preparation in the fall. Oops. I wasn’t ready in the fall! We were still watching the light and learning about our yard at that point. But if you want to be picky about it, I should have laid a garden hose out to deliniate the shape of the garden, chunked up the sod, flipped it over in the same spot with the dirt side up, and let nature get rid of the grass. I’m in for some hard work since I wasn’t ready to commit before.

A big item to be mindful of is to only plant what you’ll eat and don’t get all crazy and start too big. If you don’t eat what you grow, what’s the fun in growing it (in a vegetable garden)? And if you make a jumbotron garden right away, chances are that you’ll get overwhelmed and begin resenting it halfway through the season. Start with something managable and filled with yummy stuff your family likes!

Now the big dilema is whether to wait to start planting. It has been so unseasonably warm in Minnesota that a big part of me thinks I’m a fool to wait. Lettuce, broccoli and a few other things actually like the cold and so might do just fine now even if it does get cold again. But you can see me exercising my self control in the photo below because I’m only planting pansies…for now.

Plant Progress Report

3
Aug

It is now officially August, so I thought you might be interested to see how things look now in my garden. Also, you may be interested to know about my rooting powder experiment. If growing things interests you, read on!

Here’s what the homemade climbing trellis looks like:

Even though it is covered in green, the white still shows too much.

The scarlet runner bean has put forth a couple flowers, no beans, and definitely fewer of everything than I was hoping. Upon a longer term inspection of my sunlight situation, I have learned that the morning light starts on the other side of the garden (thus the morning glories have been unhappy) and placing my contraption further to the left would have supplied more light, and then more flowers. That’s alright, I knew it wasn’t going to be a long-term spot. It’s a good thing I started a garden notebook, because I usually forget all the things I think I will remember to do differently the next year.

And now for the status of the cuttings I took this spring. Even though they have been neglected and left out in the rain (apparently I keep forgetting to pull them to a covered spot after trying to let them dry out from the last time I forgot to pull them to a covered spot!), two of the three cuttings are growing roots and one of them is even putting up two shoots already! Check it out!

Please note the sprout in the center. I'm so proud!

I thought it would be fall before I saw any progress, but I have been very restrained and haven’t peeked even once, so maybe leaving them alone was helpful? Wahoo!

And finally, I have an unidentified flower that has finally bloomed. Because I’m an optimist, I left it to grow even though it may be a weed. But it isn’t spreading or prickly, so if it does end up being a weed, it is a well-behaved weed! If you can tell me the name of the flower on the left, my garden will thank you.

This plant is about 12" tall right now.

The Search is Over

11
Jul

I have a bee in my proverbial bonnet about a certain flower. Until today I couldn’t figure out what it was called exactly. I could only describe it, which usually brought blank stares or puzzled looks from the unsuspecting witness to my enthusiasm.

You must understand, Dear Reader, that I’ve only seen this flower in person once, and that was before my slow transition into the herky-jerky gardener I have now become, and so my observation of the plant in person was only fleeting.

But this summer I saw a photo of this flower in an old magazine from last year and immediately when I saw it, I knew that it belonged in my garden. It is too adorable — yes, adorable can truly be used in this circumstance — to be ignored. It is too unusual to dismiss. It is just way too much fun to let it pass into the hands of some wiser gardener. And therefore, I plan to purchase my first bulb online, which requires quite a bit of trust if you ask me…which I realize now you didn’t actually do…so…should I stop writing now?

No! Ha ha! I shall press on!

You have to order the bulbs now, during summer, and they don’t ship your order until fall. Does that sound fishy to anyone else? Let me get this straight: you want me to place an order with you now (on my computer, no less! It’s not like I can march down to Linders or Bachmann’s and talk to a manager if my order doesn’t get delivered), pay you now, and then just hang out and do my thing until you send my order to me four months from now? That’s nuts!

And yet, I am willing to suspend my suspicious suspicions and try to regain the trust that businesses will do what they say they’ll do, and that they will actually come through for the Little Guy. How cynical I’ve become over the years! How untrusting! It never would have dawned on me in my younger years to think that a company might not give me the best deal they could, might not think to mention the fine print, might not be trying to find a product that would satisfy both my needs and their own. Whew! To be that fresh again.

If all goes well, maybe that’s what this bulb purchase will do for me — restore my faith in corporate America. Because right about now, I’m thinking that come autumn, I might open my delivery and discover a box full of packing peanuts and discarded cracker jack prizes instead of my prized flowers. But only time will tell.

Check out this crazy flower. This is the one!

Allium

That Looked Different Inside My Head

15
Jun

I purchased two plants that required staking or support of one kind or another. In the hopes of adding some color to the wall of green that is my back lot line, I got a morning-glory and a scarlet runner bean. The scarlet runner bean is supposed to be both gorgeous AND edible — a two-fer! How could I pass it up?

At first I just created a tiny teepee from some bamboo-ish garden sticks I had around. You probably know the ones; they are the kind that turn your hands green if you handle them too much. After a few weeks of patient observation, it occurred to me that the poor things had nowhere to go and since the bean’s tag claimed it could get up to 10 feet tall, I decided to revise my initial strategy. It required some creativity, because I didn’t want to spend a lot and because, well, it’s just more fun when you make it yourself. I enlisted some child labor (my own children, breathe easy) and we embarked on a little project. It was quite rudimentary and didn’t need much in the way of equipment or tools, as you can see below.

It all seemed like such a good idea

After we got the “posts” painted (and dried, smarty pants) it was time to assemble the structure. For whatever reason, I decided the time to do this was 7:30 p.m., exactly the time when my kids get ready to go to bed. Why? Who knows, but that’s when I started to try to saw the ends of the posts into points, which in my mind would make them go into the ground better. That proved to be more difficult than I thought. The crazy things jiggled right out of my grip as I tried to saw them, or they twisted and escaped from me that way. But I was not proud and I went inside and dragged my sweet, long-suffering husband out and convinced him to saw the posts. It took him all of three minutes (for the record, he did not cut them into a point per se, he just sliced the end off at an angle. Not exactly what I had in mind, but it still served the purpose). Fully committed at that point, I had to get the thing constructed before I could call it a night, but the mosquitos were coming out and the children were crabby, so I had to do it quickly.

Once I had the posts pointy, I started digging holes in the back of the garden. Then I got the staple gun and the climbing material for the plants. Stapling like the wind, I got the thing started and managed to avoid squishing the plants I was trying to support (don’t ask me about any other plants!). After getting the kids to bed, my sweetie came out again and helped me complete as much as we could, since I ran out of climbing material. Then we went inside.

When my helpful husband came home from work the next night, he asked me if we were going to hold a ski race in the backyard. Puzzled, it took me a full 30 seconds to figure out what he was talking about. I’ll let you see if you agree with his assessment.

Either a skier or a snowplow is about to round the corner

Despite the current ugliness, I’m willing to reserve judgment until the flowers have fully covered the “trellis” and bloomed. If it still looks industrial after that point, then I will admit defeat. And it is possible that the green colored plastic fencing might have been more subtle; however, the trellises I’ve seen are so frequently white that I was swayed by my preconception — I could only be creative to a certain degree. So again, it is possible that my brilliant plan might not turn out as I intended. There is still the outside chance that it will all work out. Until it doesn’t work out, I remain hopeful. That’s what gardening is all about anyway, right?

A New Experiment

8
Jun

Recently I have been reading and re-reading a gardening book I bought at a Goodwill or Salvation Army some time ago. It goes through the entire year and maps out what you could do to work on your garden, even in the winter. It’s pretty amazing. But the most amazing discovery I have made through reading it is something called rooting powder.

Rooting powder is supposedly this amazing stuff that makes portions of plants grow roots and become independent plants in their own right. If I was more curious, I would find out what amazing chemical compound forces plants to do this, but I wouldn’t probably know what those compounds were anyway, so I haven’t bothered. (Is this lazy or merely efficient?) The time required varies widely for different plants to begin sending out roots, and some of them take so long that I would surely have thrown them out long before they had a chance to prove themselves. However, there is one particular plant for which I am willing to go the distance: the flowering almond.

Not to be confused with the sweet almond, which I mistakenly kept calling this plant until I did more research, the pink flowering almond is not as fragrant, and this is good for a nasally, allergic-y type like me. As much as I like the springtime scents of things in bloom, those same scents can be my undoing. With a flowering almond, I get to have the fluffy pink and white blossoms of spring without the itchy eyeballs and chain sneezing. The problem is, I don’t have a flowering almond, and a one gallon plant from the store costs at least $30, which I also don’t have, at least not for any more plants. Enter rooting powder.

A small container of rooting powder only costs $5 and if I can stay away from my favorite drive-thru $1.07 fountain beverage for a week, I’ll make up the difference in no time. I took some cuttings from a plant I had access to, I dipped the end of the cutting in water, then dipped it in the powder, then stuck it in some dirt. Later, I realized my mistake and repeated the process, only putting the dipped stick in a bunch of sand rather than dirt. Now I must wait. But before I wait in vain, I just wanted to ask if the plant in the photo below looks the way it is supposed to? My instincts tell me something is amiss.

These are root powder cuttings after a couple days. This does not bode well.

A Practice in Restraint

12
May

We finally (FINALLY!) moved into our new house. We could take a moment to reflect and rejoice just about that fact alone, but we will move on to the real point of this post — my newly inherited garden.

It is so hard to wait and see what comes up in the garden beds. I’m dying to get my hands in the dirt and add to the basics that I’ve found so far. It is still kindof early, but already I’ve identified multiple varieties of hostas, peonies, daffodils, sedums, rhododendrons, silver mound and grape hyacinths. Someone here cared for this yard at one point, but it has been a while. And of course, as things vary by gardener, there are placements of flowers and shrubs that leave me scratching my head. For example, why did someone plant burning bush, which is now at least five feet tall, at the front of a flower bed along the side of the house and then place sedums behind it? The sedums will be blocked out from sight by the shrubs. Why? I’m not sure yet, and it may end up being a lack of planning, but maybe there’s a secret reason that will become clear as the season progresses.

I found a fantastic website that focuses on plants that thrive in Minnesota. None of this “landscaping in Georgia business” that so many gardening magazines use as their starting point and which won’t help me in the least. The University of Minnesota Extension Office is a great resource and this particular link has all kinds of helpful plants that grow well in our conditions. They also have lists of plants that are deer resistant, which is a new challenge of my new location. They’ve already munched the tops off the emerging hostas near the road and along the end of the driveway, and I’m curious about how far into the yard they will venture.

If you’re looking for plants that have a good chance of thriving in Minnesota, that don’t need a lot of babying, and that have a long flowering season, check out this link and see what you think. They even list things that attract butterflies or hummingbirds, always a welcome addition to the interest of the garden. I have a feeling it will be something I come back to again and again.
http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/horticulture/components/08464-complete.pdf